NAOMI COOK BOOK.
Toronto [Ontario, Canada]: Naomi Chapter of Hadassah, 1934. Item #42439
2nd edition [1st is 1928]. Original publisher’s cloth, 8vo, 199 pages. Includes illustrations. 24 cm. 2nd edition of the exceedingly rare first dated Jewish cookbook published in Canada (The first edition was 1928; Libbie Jacobs’ “The Council Kosher Cook Book,” was published in Montreal, also in the 1920s). This is almost certainly the 3rd Jewish cookbook published in Canada, as OCLC lists no Jewish cookbooks published in Montreal, Toronto, or Winnipeg before 1935 other than this one and the two pre-cursors mentioned above, about which leading Jewish cookbook scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett confirmed with us that there are none earlier “that I know of.” OCLC-Worldcat lists only one copy of the 1st edition, and only 5 copies of this 2nd edition (OCLC: 38434616: NYPL, Harvard, HUC, UWaterloo, UGulph). A total of 4 editions were published, through the 1960s. Recipes are attributed to specific Canadian Hadassah members. Includes publisher and commercial advertisements throughout text and at the end, as well as household hints, sample menus, and blank pages for notes and recipes. Some recipes include wine or liquor as ingredients. Unknown to Henry Notaker (http://www.notaker.com/bibliogr/jewish.htm). In her 2020 article “The Naomi Cook Book: a Narrative of Canadian Jewish Integration” (https://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs/article/download/40166/36380/4 9703) Gesa Trojan “suggests that this cookbook exemplified an ‘integration narrative’ combining Jewish and Canadian values in an upper-middle-class milieu. The recipes included in ‘The Naomi cook book’ were all kosher, helping to solidify the Jewish identity of the authors and readers. This cookbook is confirmation that one could be a kosher observant Jew while still adopting Canadian cultural practices. A question that remains is how far Jewish communities will go in order to integrate? In other words, will Jewish communities eventually abandon kashrut and move onto another cuisine as time progresses?” (Cappucci, J. Retain or Reject: The Adherence to the Kosher Laws in a Canadian City. Cont Jewry 41, 411–435 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-021-09393-z). In a summary of her article published by the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, a picture is painted of a collection of recipes in the 1928 edition from 6 years earlier for “Maple Waffles, Ukrainian Orphan Candy, South American Fried Chicken, Blintzes, Matzo Balls, and Chop Suey....The ‘Naomi Cook Book’ is, however, more than a colorful recipe collection. Engaging the medium of a cookbook, the Hadassah women promoted a narrative of Jewish integration into an Anglophone Canadian society and a larger sociocultural frame of North American consumer culture. This narrative is based on the key elements of Jewish traditions and North American upper-middle-class practices, Jewish interests at that time and Ashkenazi heritage, and the industrialization of the home. These themes were written into and transpired through the pages of the 'Naomi Cook Book'. Its menus for Passover or Luncheons speak simultaneously to both, Jewish traditions and North-American middle-class preferences. Dedicating the revenues from selling the book to Zionist initiatives the female authors took a strong political stance for Jewish interests at the time, while remembering their Ashkenazi roots. Moreover, the Hadassah women unapologetically put forward the benefits of the industrialization of the home by promoting processed foods like Crisco or the latest electric appliances. At the intersection of these trajectories, the authors of the Naomi Cook Book actively constructed a powerful integration narrative as they proposed an image of what an integrated North American Jewish life should look like in Canada during the first half of the 20th century by selecting the featured dishes, their ingredients, and presentation as well as by recruiting sponsors whose products appeared as advertisements next to the recipes. Flipping through the pages of the cookbook allows for unravelling the history of integration not as a linear sequence of steps on a ladder leading to completion, but as a process with recurring and reassembling challenges and contestations fostering hybrid Jewish Canadian identities” (https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2904164609694156&set=a.13344512233321 77). SUBJECT(S): Jewish cooking. Passover cooking. Cooking, Canadian. Community cookbooks -- Ontario -- Toronto. Cuisine juive. Cuisine de Pa^que. Cuisine canadienne. Livres de cuisine d'organismes communautaires -- Ontario -- Toronto. Light wear to cloth, toning to paper, especially at edges, pencil notes to blank "notes" pages and occational pencil marginalia. Good Condition. Rare and important. (Women-6-9-823-+).
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